1. Field of the Invention
The present document relates to a cube puzzle comprising differently shaped polycubes that can be arranged and assembled to form a cube. The side of the cube is four units long and the polycubes each include one or more smaller cubes, each smaller cube having a side of length one unit. Furthermore, the polycubes can be arranged in different configurations to build a wide variety of shapes other than a cube.
2. Description of Related Art
Existing 4×4×4 cube puzzles such as the Bedlam Cube™, also known as the Crazee Cube™, and the Tetris Cube™, are known to be extremely difficult. While many solutions to each can be found, just finding one of them is considered to be very much a random process. As a result, there may be some users that quickly lose interest in such cubes. The Bedlam Cube™ comprises twelve polycubes each of five unit cubes and one polycube of four units. The Tetris Cube™ comprises eight polycubes each of five unit cubes and four polycubes each of six unit cubes. There are other 4×4×4 puzzles with very complex polycubes which are not appropriate for building a wide range of other meaningful shapes.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,065,970 discloses a puzzle comprising polycubes that can be assembled to form different rectangular parallelepipeds. U.S. Pat. No. 4,662,638 discloses a 4×4×4 cube puzzle comprising twelve polycubes each of five unit cubes and one polycube of four units. U.S. Pat. No. 5,823,533 discloses a puzzle for making a 4×4×4 cube comprising planar, or 2D, polycubes.
Existing commercially available puzzles generally comprise sets of polycubes with minimal range in their size or complexity. Solutions, rather than hints, to such puzzles can easily be found on the internet. In contrast, it would be beneficial to have a puzzle that lends itself to the provision of hints that can teach a user how to solve it, thereby preserving some of the user's sense of achievement.